Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Black and White Series: A Question For The Teacher (2005)



This image from last year matches my continuing state of having a mind full of questions but no clear teacher. Or maybe it's that the darkness I am looking into IS the teacher. Or that there is no "teacher" and no "not-teacher."

Here are two interviews with Robert Pirsig, one from 1974 and one from 2005. I didn't read the two books that followed ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, but now I am curious about them. In 1992, Robert Pirsig stated that he felt that he was done with writing. From the descriptions I've read, the third book is a transcript of on-line discussions of Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality, with comments by Pirsig.

When, out of curiosity, I type the words "bob dylan" and "Robert Pirsig" into Google, my blog comes up on the first page. The ocean was my first spiritual teacher. Bob Dylan was my second spiritual teacher, beginning in 1964. Maybe I liked Robert Pirsig, whose ideas came into my life around 1974, because he reminded me of Bob Dylan and the ocean. My experience of them was that I did not "feel so all alone" after hearing what they had to say. I didn't agreed with everything they said, but what they had to "say" was expansive rather than stifling and gave me a context in which to grow, as did Georgia O'Keeffe and Thomas Merton in the early 80s and Martin Buber in the early 90s. I am grateful to all my spiritual teachers. I am still growing.

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